Our Manila PLM reunion--"An Affair To Remember"

Let’s make the PLM reunion
“Our Affair To Remember”



I’m very sorry for this late response; I was so busy the past week. Anyway, I read the minutes of your meeting-- and that you’re planning to get a high profile speaker to grace our forthcoming alumni homecoming, hoping that with this popular speaker we could get enough media mileage and exposure

If I may suggest, I think our reunion should focus more on the alumni and the members of the university community: the teaching and administrative staff and the students. We are supposed to hold this affair with one objective in mind—to meet up and renew our ties with our classmates and schoolmates whom we haven’t seen for years, thereby reminiscing with them our fond memories and dreams

Our reunion is a great time to relax, exchange a never-ending kamustahan and be ourselves, free from the cares of the world. In short, let’s make this gathering Our Affair to Remember. After four decades, the PLM has produced outstanding men and women in various professional fields- school deans, lawyers, doctors, nurses, journalists, professors businessmen, engineers, board topnotchers, officials of national and international organizations and many others. I strongly believe we can get one good, home-grown keynote speaker among us who can speak for all of the alumni--.someone who’s the epitome of the PLM ideals. If we could do this, then we have all the reason to commemorate our “4 Na Dekada na Walang Kakupas-kupas”
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Being an alumni event, could we possibly de-politicize the reunion, meaning no-speeches from politicians and I’m sure even our school president Tamano would understand this stance. Well, we can just have a tour on the PLM with him and a courtesy call with Manila Mayor Lim.
Another point is why we don’t take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime gathering to come up with a big, really big project for the benefit of the poor students. What I have in mind is the putting up of The Pamantasan Café. We have a captured market, the thousand alumni the PLM has produced’ through the years and the profits generated from this venture could be used to fund the scholarships and other programs. To raise the needed capital, all we have to do is, invest $ 100 each, and if there are 500 alumni joining in, then we can have enough capital to start the business. The 500 investors will have one share of stock each, entitling them to have one vote and no one should be allowed to have more than one share of stock, thereby preventing anybody from having controlling interest in the business. So all the 500 will be shareholders of the corporation. As shareholders, now we could elect the members of the board who would eventually manage the business. This is just an idea, I don’t know if the project is feasible.

As regards, Edith’s concerns on generating awareness and insuring maximum attendance to the event, I think all the committees should get involved in making sure that all these alumni are contacted through e-mails, phone calls and text messaging Aside from on-air plugs, press releases, web sites reports, we can also have banners and posters placed in some strategic places in Manila to generate awareness.

Another way to create enough stir is to revive the Coffee Hour and through this program, these students will have a chance to hear some encouraging and inspiring stories from the alumni themselves while enjoying their free coffee/tea/cookies. To get the students attention and interest, we can hold an exhibit of old photos, books, uniforms, souvenirs and other memorabilia. Willie Jose.